Articles – Cornell Law Review

Category: Articles

Article

The City’s Second Amendment

Dave Fagundes, Baker Botts LLP Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center

Darrell A. H. Miller, Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

This Article addresses the question of the extent to which cities themselves have a right to bear arms. In addition to advancing the novel claim that cities themselves may assert rights to keep and bear arms, the Article also adds to the growing literature on municipal constitutional rights and the institutional framing of the Second Amendment in a post-Heller world.

Mar 2021

Article

A Tale of Two Formalisms: How Law and Economics Mirrors Originalism and Textualism

Neil H. Buchanan, Professor of Law and James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, The University of Florida

Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

This Article argues that we have witnessed substantially less direct conflict between L&E and O&T than one would expect because, despite their different foundations, the two approaches closely resemble each other in a way that permits conservative jurists to make all-things-considered and ideologically laden value choices and then use L&E, O&T, or both to offer post hoc rationalizations for those choices.

Mar 2021

Article

Litigation Science After the Knowledge Crisis

Edith Beerdsen, Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering, New York University School of Law

This Article is the first to address the broad implications of the Replication Crisis for the production of scientific knowledge in a civil-litigation context. Drawing on insights from the Crisis, it argues that current procedural practice is simply incapable of providing a court with the information it needs to make an accurate assessment of the reliability of scientific evidence. The Article identifies a number of core principles, drawn from the response of academic science to the Replication Crisis, that can guide reforms to the treatment of scientific evidence in civil litigation. It argues that shoring up the courts’ capacity to evaluate scientific evidence requires a rethinking of the entire chain of creation of scientific knowledge and a re-framing of the role of the court in that chain.

Mar 2021

Article

The Evidence Rules That Convict the Innocent

Jeffrey Bellin, Professor, William & Mary Law School

This Article explores the lessons of the Innocence Movement for American evidence law. It argues that the discovery and ongoing chronicle of hundreds of false convictions present a unique opportunity to reevaluate American evidence law. This reevaluation could lead to innocence-protective changes to existing evidence rules and a welcome infusion of energy into evidence policymaking and commentary.

Jan 2021

Article

Inescapable Surveillance

Matthew Tokson, Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

This Article offers the first systematic analysis of inescapability in Fourth Amendment law. It challenges the prevailing wisdom that inescapability is a desirable or workable basis for Fourth Amendment protection. Inescapability does not provide a conceptually coherent standard for courts to apply. It incentivizes consumers to forego beneficial technologies, creating substantial social harms. It fails to adequately protect the most sensitive forms of personal information. It creates doctrinal confusion and ignores established precedents that contradict the inescapability model. Moreover, inescapability analysis elides individual differences—technologies that are avoidable for most people may be unavoidable for others, including the disabled, the poor, and other disadvantaged populations.

Jan 2021

Article

Population-Based Sentencing

Jessica M. Eaglin, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

This Article addresses the institutionalization of actuarial risk assessments at sentencing by identifying the tension between how courts are responding to actuarial risk assessments at sentencing, and how advocates of the trend want courts to respond to the tools. It also identifies a yet underexplored interest convergence between courts and RAIs’ opponents illuminated by the jurisprudence and worthy of further
exploration going forward.

Jan 2021

Article

The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance

Lucian A. Bebchuk, James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance, and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School

Roberto Tallarita, Terence M. Considine Senior Fellow in Law and Economics, and Associate Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School

To address growing concerns about the negative effects of corporations on their stakeholders, supporters of stakeholder governance (“stakeholderism”) advocate a governance model that encourages and relies on corporate leaders to serve the interests of stakeholders and not only those of shareholders. We conduct a conceptual, economic, and empirical analysis of stakeholderism and its expected consequences. Stakeholderism, we conclude, is an inadequate and substantially counterproductive approach to addressing stakeholder concerns.

Dec 2020

Article

Bad Money

Dan Awrey

Professor of Law, Cornell Law School; Research Member, European Corporate Governance Institute.

This Article represents the first comprehensive examination of the antiquated patchwork of state regulatory frameworks that currently, or might soon, govern these new institutions. It finds that these frameworks are characterized by significant heterogeneity and often fail to meaningfully enhance the credibility of the promises that these institutions make to the holders of their monetary liabilities. Put bluntly: these institutions are issuing bad money. This Article therefore proposes a National Money Act designed to strengthen and harmonize the regulatory frameworks governing these new institutions and promote a more level competitive playing field.

Dec 2020

Article

Automated Legal Guidance

Joshua D. Blank, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Strategic Initiatives, University of California, Irvine School of Law

Leigh Osofsky, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

This Article offers one of the first critiques of these new systems of artificial intelligence. It shows that automated legal guidance currently relies upon the concept of “simplexity,” whereby complex law is presented as though it is simple, without actually engaging in simplification of the underlying law. While this approach offers potential gains in terms of efficiency and ease of use, it also causes the government to present the law as simpler than it is, leading to less precise advice and potentially inaccurate legal positions. Using the Interactive Tax Assistant as a case study, the Article shows that the use of simplexity in automated legal guidance is more powerful and pervasive than in static publications because it is personalized, non-qualified, and instantaneous. Further, it argues that understanding the costs as well as the benefits of current forms of automated legal guidance is essential to evaluating even more sophisticated, but also more opaque, automated systems that governments are likely to adopt in the future.

Dec 2020

Article

Constitutional Rights in the Machine-Learning State

Aziz Z. Huq

Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.

This Article offers a start to the larger project of developing a general account of substantive rules and enforcement mechanisms to promote due process, privacy, and equality norms in the machine-learning state. Cataloging notable state and municipal adoptions of machine-learning tools, it considers how existing constitutional norms can be recalibrated (in the case of due process and equality) or retooled (in the case of privacy). It further reexamines the enforcement regime for constitutional interests in light of machine learning’s dissemination. Today, constitutional rights are (largely) enforced through discrete, individual legal actions. Machine learning’s normative implications arise from systemic design choices. The retail enforcement mechanisms that currently dominate the constitutional remedies context are therefore particularly ill fitting. Instead, a careful mix of ex ante regulation and ex post aggregate litigation, which are necessary complements, is more desirable.

Nov 2020

Volume 106

Unequal Representation: Women in Clinical Research
Allison M. Whelan

Associate, Covington & Burling LLP, Washington D.C.; J.D., University of Minnesota Law School; M.A. Bioethics, University of Minnesota. Special thanks to Professor Michele Goodwin and the editors of the Cornell Law Review. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not represent those of any past, current, or future employer.
Apr 2021
Copyright Silencing

Cathay Y. N. Smith, Associate Professor of Law, University of Montana Blewett School of Law. Thanks to Aman Gebru, Jennifer Sturiale, Jacob Victor, Xiyin Tang, for comments and Nicholson Price and Alex Roberts for organizing the 2020 virtual JIPSA summer workshop. Thanks also to Orly Lobel and her students at University of San Diego School of Law for inviting me to talk about this Essay and Tiger King. Finally, thank you to the diligent law review editors at Cornell Law Review.

Jan 2021
The Electors Clause and the Governor’s Veto
Nathaniel F. Rubin. J.D., Stanford Law School, 2018. My thanks go to Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Allison Douglis, Fares Akremi, and Adam Hersh—without whose feedback and guidance this Essay would not have been possible. My thanks too to the editors of the Cornell Law Review for their excellent work under trying conditions—including Victor Flores, Nicholas Pulakos, Lachanda Reid, Gabriela Markolovic, and Jared Quigley. All errors are my own.
Jan 2021
Book Review—Yearning to Breathe Free: Migration Related Confinement in America
Danielle C. Jefferis. Assistant Professor, California Western School of Law. I owe deep gratitude to Professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández. His research and scholarship are significant contributions to this field and have pushed me to think critically about my own work. He and I, along with Carrie Rosenbaum and Jennifer Chacón, were in conversation about this book during an Author Meets Reader session at the Law and Society’s 2020 Annual Meeting, and our dialogue refined this piece. I also thank the editors of Cornell Law Review, including Gabriela Markolovic, Nicholas Pulakos, and Victor Flores, who have diligently and skillfully prepared this piece for publication during especially unsettled times. Any and all errors are mine.
Oct 2020
Ford’s Hidden Fairness Defect

Linda Sandstrom Simard, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School.

Cassandra Burke Robertson, John Deaver Drinko—BakerHostetler Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Charles W. “Rocky” Rhodes, Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston.

Oct 2020
New York Bail Reform: A Quick Guide to Common Questions and Concerns
Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud, law clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and former appellate public defender in New York City.

Beulah Sims-Agbabiaka, law clerk at the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and former appellate public defender in New York City.
Oct 2020

Category: Articles

Dave Fagundes, Baker Botts LLP Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center Darrell A. H. Miller, Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

Neil H. Buchanan, Professor of Law and James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, The University of Florida Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Edith Beerdsen, Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering, New York University School of Law

Jeffrey Bellin, Professor, William & Mary Law School

Matthew Tokson, Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

Jessica M. Eaglin, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Dan Awrey Professor of Law, Cornell Law School; Research Member, European Corporate Governance Institute.

Joshua D. Blank, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Strategic Initiatives, University of California, Irvine School of Law Leigh Osofsky, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

Aziz Z. Huq Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.

Dave Fagundes, Baker Botts LLP Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center

Darrell A. H. Miller, Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

Neil H. Buchanan, Professor of Law and James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, The University of Florida

Michael C. Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Dan Awrey

Professor of Law, Cornell Law School; Research Member, European Corporate Governance Institute.

Joshua D. Blank, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Strategic Initiatives, University of California, Irvine School of Law

Leigh Osofsky, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

Aziz Z. Huq

Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.